$8 Million Jury Slap For Baxter

Award Backs Ex-employee's Business-interference Suit

"This" is a dispute between Zdeb and his former employer, Baxter International Inc., over a device Zdeb invented after his job was eliminated nearly seven years ago.

"I'm a guy working out of his home, and a $10 billion corporation is trying to put me out of business," said Zdeb, 48, of Round Lake Park.

But it was the guy working out of his home, not the international corporation, who has been handed crowing rights.

This week, a Cook County Circuit Court jury awarded Zdeb a little over $8 million in a case involving a legal issue that has rarely been tried in Illinois.

"I'm really happy that we have a jury system that saw through Baxter's charade," Zdeb said. "The jury did the right thing."

"All we can say is we're disappointed with the verdict, and we're looking at all of our legal options at this point," said Deborah Spak, a spokeswoman for Deerfield-based Baxter.

The episode dates to Dec. 6, 1988, when Zdeb, who had worked as an engineer in Baxter's Round Lake facility for eight years, found out he no longer had a job.

Still unemployed several months later, Zdeb, who has 16 patents to his credit, formed his own company and came up with a device to get it off the ground. The disposable device, for which he obtained a patent, infuses medicines, such as chemotherapy, antibiotics and pain killers, continually into patients.

In December 1989, Zdeb and his partner, who is now out of the picture, approached Baxter. "At that time (Baxter) wanted to do a business deal with us," Zdeb said. But the next month, Baxter's tone abruptly changed, and, Zdeb said, thus began the cat-and-mouse game, with Baxter claiming Zdeb had misappropriated company trade secrets--without being specific as to which ones.

"They started to make accusations that I had taken certain technology" but would not identify "what the technology was," he said.

"Our response," he added, was to offer Baxter the patent for free "if they could prove I had taken anything."

What Baxter eventually identified as a company trade secret was already in the public domain, Zdeb said.

It was like trying to claim a patent "for reinventing the wheel," he said.

When Zdeb pointed this out, he said, Baxter's response was, "You didn't take that, you took something else."

Matters came to a head when Zdeb, having given up on Baxter, attempted to negotiate a deal with Solopak Pharmaceuticals Inc., then a division of a British company, Smith & Nephew. Solopak, based in Elk Grove Village, was later spun off to investors.

"For a guy working out of his home, trying to support his family (a contract with a unit of a $1 billion-a-year corporation) was a very big deal," Zdeb said.

In January 1991, Solopak received a letter from Baxter saying Zdeb had misappropriated technology employing Baxter trade secrets. Zdeb's deal with Solopak was killed "dead in the water."

The letter not only killed the deal with Solopak, it effectively snubbed out any future agreements with other companies.

Zdeb sued.

He alleged that Baxter had improperly interfered with an expected business opportunity, a complaint that has been asserted only a few times in Illinois courts, says Zdeb's attorney, Rene A. Torrado, a partner with Chicago law firm Vedder, Price, Kaufman & Kammholz.

While the legal drama played on, Zdeb did odd jobs and some consulting. "It's been a difficult time for my family and me," Zdeb said. But throughout, his wife and two children "stood behind me the whole way."

"I've had interest from a lot of different companies, but (the dispute with Baxter) has restricted my ability" to pursue any potential deals, Zdeb said.

"It was kind of dumb," Zdeb said. "We could have sat down and had a cup of coffee and discussed those issues, (but) they were completely unresponsive."

After three weeks of testimony, the jury on Tuesday agreed with Zdeb.

Baxter still maintains that Zdeb violated company trade secrets. "While he was still working at Baxter, he (Zdeb) was exposed to a wide range of our research and development efforts that we consider proprietary and confidential," spokeswoman Spak said.

Zdeb, however, said that Baxter admitted during the trial that his infuser did not employ any of the company's trade secrets or technology.

Meanwhile, business prospects have improved for Zdeb and his one-man company, Prime Medical Products Inc. A Houston company, Syringe Concepts Inc., is introducing to the market a needle-retractable syringe Zdeb developed that prevents people from being stuck by used needles.

Zdeb also has transferred the technology for his infuser--the one Baxter said employed its trade secrets--to McKinley Inc., a startup company based in a suburb of Denver. It is headed by another former Baxter employee.